YoghurtMan

Fantastic bit of self-promotion by the devs

As soon as I started reading about the anniversary, I was going to reactivate my account (been thinking about it since before i14 went live), but then I read about the free reactivation so I decided to hold off and get an extra week free...

I had 11am to 5pm available as a solid block to play and hopefully view some of the events from the first year and a half of the game, which were before my time. Instead, my account was reactivated sometime after 6pm, and by annoying the wife, I was able to get half an hour later on, but the game was so laggy I could barely move around and didn't see anything of the anniversary event at all!

Way to go devs! If you think this makes me more likely to come back and spend my money here, forget it!

After this weekend of free play , I shall be applying a game time card for 15 days.

At the end of this time I shall have already left the country for Christmas, and won't return until January 1st. I will still have one game time card unused at that point, and according to the box they came in, they expire 31/12/08

Is there any way to avoid losing half the time I paid for? I only got this card a little while ago, yet the expiry is the same as ones I used in 2007...

Thanks in advance to anyone (preferably red named) who knows what the situation is with game time cards.

I've done a lot of soloing with my storm/elec defender, he can't blast as effectively as a blaster, but he's till pretty effective imo. Despite reading over and over on these forums that the end drain of elec is a waste of time, I slotted all the attacks with one endmod, and minions and lieutenants run out of end before they die - with small groups using a few AoEs can stop them fighting back fairly effectively. Bosses are harder - sometimes the end drain works sometimes not, EBs and AVs are a waste of time trying - just have to use as much storm power as possible to debuff them (which usually works).

And when you stop soloing and join a team for a change of pace, you can completely forget about end usage - I can fire off powers with complete disregard to end use and still keep a full end bar

I've searched to try and find out how to do this, but not been able to find anything, and I can't find how to do it by fiddling, so...

How can I display the current regeneration and recovery rates of my character in game? I'm trying to balance set bonuses against end consumption at the moment, and I have numbers for end consumption thanks to the detailed descriptions, but I can't find the way to display end recovery

Thanks to whoever can help a poor fool

Yoghurt Man (pun on Spidey's origin), Steel Thunder (pun), the Rose Gardener (plant/thorn dom), and Web Mistress (pun, uses web grenades) are my "better" names, imo.

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Please see the below, might come in useful?

SuperHero Name Generator

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Space Dolphin?

We have a winner.

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How about Spaced Olphin? Either way you're going to have to get on the costume thread and chase a porpoise-like bestial head...

With tactics my ninjas have no problem with one acc - leaves more slots free to power up the holds/confuses/debuffs

You'll notice only robo and merc mms have even a little time for this horrible power, which is because at least they have a chance that their pets will sit in the area for the length of a fight!

Triage beacon looks nice but is truly horrible If we really want our pets to last longer, and we have traps, we take the medicine pool... Once we have the medicine pool, there is no excuse for wasting a power and a bunch of slots on a glowing advertisement for the Bavarian Illuminati.

What would be a good power would be FFG with the horrible robo-drone replaced by a floating tetrahedron of doom

My 25 pl/th has been on ruthless since seeds; he could probably do relentless, but there are two problems...
1) EBs are trouble enough already, and
2) he's my third alt, and goes long spells without being played, which means that I forget how to use him sometimes, and get killed before I have him working at full speed again

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My favourite defender for soloing is my Storm/Electric. Particularly fun herding rooms up in order to pull them around corners slap bang into my cloud. Teams don't like me doing that for some reason

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Yeah, teams don't appreciate tornado and storm for some reason You'd think they didn't like watching mobs fly around like ragdolls! Maybe they should get more ranged attacks like proper heroes Then they wouldn't have to worry about chasing after them...

Also electric has tesla cage, which is a great piece of extra control to have available, and soon I'll have a voltaic sentinel - sometimes I feel like a weather mastermind

I like my storm/elec, although not having a self heal can be worrying at times. Freezing Rain slotted for def debuff is pretty devastating, and tornado and storm do a good job of keeping mobs off you. Elec is just for thematics, but I do like the end drains

Just wanted to throw in my oar as no one shows much respect for storm

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My first three are called "Bachman" "Turner" and "Overdrive". The next 2 will probably Be "Smashy" and "Nicey" and the last one will just be called "Let's Rock!"

I was going to name them after members of Busted and McFly but then I realised I'd just want to beat the living shyte out of them all the time and I'd never get anything done. Hmmmm...

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Most amusing post I've seen in a while (to me - don't get offended anyone!) All I can say is they can't be ninjas or you'd want to beat the living shyte out of them ALL THE TIME, no matter what their names were!

I've been on holiday for two weeks, and thanks to being rusty in idiot pet management, I died twice in a paper mish

Even being rusty I could tell something was wrong when the Oni died first... Maybe they patched the artificial stupidity again?

I'm interested - 8pm onwards is best for me, but I'm also around fairly randomly at other times...

Ninjas no longer get superleap (except for Oni). Instead genin and jounin start with +jump, and get an additional dose (stacked icons) of +jump when they used to get superleap (genin with KIZ, jounin after training).

I would guess, but could be wrong that all pets have been given the starting +jump to help reduce the number of times they get stuck!

I'm not really a measuring sort of person, but my ninjas seem to be able to jump as high as before (up one level on most maps).

I also have the mission available on Zatanninja, and as I'd like to get capbuster (the red caps spawn pretty generously if you don't knock Snaptooth around too quickly), feel free to give me a shout if you see me around - although I need to do it malefactored as I don't want to level up to 40 before I7!

At 39 I get to visit Brickstown and grab +10% hits, then head straight off for the new Grandville content

I've had a quick go with a Ninja/Trick Arrow Blastermind, and at lvl 4 he's actually quite reasonable with no pets; he never puts the bow down since brawl and throw daggers are weapon friendly, which avoids the draw weapon animation delays that thug blasterminds may suffer from.

To be honest it feels a lot like playing a dominator! Of course, dominators do gradually improve their assault options, whereas the blastermind stalls out at 3 attacks...

I suspect that in the long run the fighting pool would be useful, although I understand that the attacks aren't weapon-friendly

I think I'll be spending my time on an elec/elec brute when I7 goes live though - and my time for wasting on experiments will be gone (what with that and exploring 40+ content with my MM)...

The choices are very like the Rose Gardener, who can solo on the fourth difficulty level, which is more than I feel confident with for my other characters...

I haven't taken skewer, but at the moment it's a toss up between that and health - I don't like melee, but mobs end up in my face all the time, and an damaging melee attack could be a real bonus when a mob really really needs to be taken down quick...

I find SS great, it works as stealth for setting up seeds shots, and hasten is domination's best friend

EDIT: I'd suggest against Spirit Tree too, my MM has Triage Beacon, which is basically the same power, and it's just not that useful, and you're only getting the benefit once rather than the MM's seven times...

Well, things can be weird in PvP from what I've seen...

My first foray was during the special event in Siren's and as a villain I was trapped when the "heroes" camped the hospital - which has since caused a map correction

I went back in last night, and discovered that for some unknown reason I was the highest bounty target! I let people know I was just there searching for the history plaque, and didn't get hunted down like a dog - which was nice!

I did get ambushed by an ice troller, but he just immobilised me (and pets) so I popped a break free and targetted him - he had a couple of seconds to regret attacking before succumbing to the combined fire of my ninjas...

I did eventually find the plaque, and I left the zone. My point is that although most of the players there are there for PvP brawling, they are sporting enough to leave you alone if you let them know that's not your thing, and don't suddenly start ambushing people

So thanks to all those heroes on Siren's last night for not making my search hell

I may even try some PvP with my dominator in a few more levels...

Seeds is particularly brilliant for soloing, but has also been the cause of most of my deaths when used on teams...

The whole "run right in front of a huge group of thugs and fire cone" is great when it works, but if there are too many in the group (max affected is less for a cone) or you just get unlucky and see a sea of MISS rising, then instead of fun you're a squishy who just grabbed ALL the aggro!

Seeds is a really strong power for the level, BUT it is by no means the equal of mass confuse...

My Plant/Thorns dom has single hold, area immob, cone confusion, and area sleep as controls and all the ranged thorns (so far); I slotted for accuracy, as missing a hold or immob can lead to very quick faceplanting...

I'm currently playing on the fourth level of difficulty, without too much trouble (occasionally a boss causes difficulty, such as the one who I couldn't keep held or immobilised despite hasten and domination and one of the thorn attacks causing immob...), which is two levels higher than even my mastermind plays at, so it must be doing something right

The only issue with my build is that the immob can't be used on a partially slept spawn due to waking the sleepers.

Coming back to the thread I started now I'm at level 32, my genin are called Bert, Ernie, and George, my jounin are Jake and Elwood, and my oni is called Zen.

Zen is up for a name change, but so far I'm lacking in inspiration...

I took web grenade, triage beacon, acid mortar, force field generator, and seeker drones.
With my respec I switched to web grenade, caltrops, and force field generator.
Apart from wishing I'd stuck with triage beacon instead of caltrops, respeccing everything out pretty much sums up my experience with this secondary...

I so wish I'd gone with dark miasma, which I was going to do except that I already have a /dark defender...

I found triage beacon too minor an effect to be useful in combat, so I was really only using it to shorten the waits between combats. However, I almost never use caltrops (it probably would have been useful at the beginning of the game, but now I'm rarely close enough to the enemy to use them!), and I find waiting for all 6 henches to heal a bit dull, and often charge in with one or two half dead, so I could still use it

Seeker Drones were truly awful. I mat take poison trap or trip mines, although I don't think I'd get much use out of them. I'm quite looking forward to detonating my ninjas though

I play ninja traps, and I think manoeuvres helps... The ninjas have a good def bonus on their own, and with a force field projector increasing it, the small addition from manoeuvres is actually quite useful. I do notice my henches going down more quickly if I get held or slept (detoggled)...

I had tactics and man, but after respeccing I added assault - haven't really had time to judge that yet. I had plenty of trap powers to ditch (I also added stamina, and I didn't have fitness before...).

I have one endrdx SO slotted for each, and with one endmod SO in stamina my end recovers quickly enough for me to use my one attack power in every fight (I used to use it roughly one in three), which is an extra bonus

The only issue with my current spec is that most of the powers are either fully slotted or don't need slotting, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all the extra slots I get in the 30s

I still feel like a noob a lot of the time... These questions are part of that!

Firstly, the Oni can slot hold enhancements but not immobilise enhancements - he starts every attack with immobilize, so I wouldn't mind slotting that, but I don't think he has a hold at all...

Secondly, is there a good way to use seeker drones? They seem like they could be useful, but whenever I meet anything tough, they always seem to veer off and hit a minion away from the main threat!

If anyone has any tips, I'd love to hear them, also how good is poison trap, as I haven't picked that yet?

Just thought I'd start a thread to see how other people liked to name their minions...

I had mercenaries called Bert and Ernie, the medic would have been called George I hadn't yet decided what the more elite troops would have been called - maybe Laurel and Hardy, and then Chaplin (although I don't like Chaplin much, so I would have kept my thinking cap on while I levelled up).