Archie Gremlin

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On a team of 8, it takes 8 times as many drops for a purple to hit your character as it would solo.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed.

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Because the spawns for an 8-man team aren't 8 times the size of those for a solo team (well, I don't think you get 24 mob-spawns on an 8 man team), it takes longer.

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Most decent 8 toon teams I've been on tackle multiple spawns at once; usually 2 and in some cases 3 or 4. (When the team splits in two and each half tackles two spawns at once.) So a big team isn't restricted by the maximum spawn size.

However, lets assume you're right and 8 man teams can't make up for splitting the drops 8 ways. I know that my toons can kill more than twice as fast in a duo than solo. This suggests that there's an optimal team size somewhere between 2 and 8.

I wonder if anyone's tried any experiments about this.

Some bugs are just plain stubborn. Many years ago I played a game called Darklands. It was kind of like Oblivion but more awesome and with 256 colours!

The Microprose dev's were very keen to fix bugs in Darklands but they were defeated by the "green hair bug". Every now and then, a character's hair would turn green. Re-loading the game wouldn't fix it. There was no work around. Worse than that, nobody could reproduce it. The months went by and the dev's got increasingly desperate. They would not be defeated by this bug.

In the end, they actually offered money to anyone who could reproduce it.

Nobody claimed the money. They never fixed the bug.

Yep. I've seen lots of %% since I13.

[ QUOTE ]
You can increase the odds of getting a purple (or any) recipe drop by soloing.

[/ QUOTE ]

What's the logic behind this? AFAIK drop rates aren't affected by team size and teams defeat enemies much faster than solo toons, so I wouldn't expect teaming to make much difference.

[ QUOTE ]
why not have it paid automatically as an SG option.

Better just get rid of it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed. It's pointless at the moment.

The reason it's pointless is that any toons that are capable of raising enough prestige to equip a base barely notice this level of rent.

On the other hand, I've only got one base so it's just a minor irritant. If I had 30+ bases though it would be a major pain.

[ QUOTE ]
Or, team with 7 other people, all of whom have a wand. Then you only have to do 2.5 each.

[/ QUOTE ]

I tried that but it didn't work. The first 2 were easy but it didn't matter where I looked, I couldn't find 1/2 a Lost.

Would we be better off if the dev's consolidated invention levels so that set IO's have the same levels as common IO's. i.e. all levels are rounded to the nearest 5. (10, 15, 20 etc)

The main advantage would be that it would concentrate recipes into fewer "niches" in the market. This is handy for people who are trying to buy recipes or enhancements which are in short supply. e.g. lvl 30-35 melee sets Instead of having to place orders in four or five different levels they could just place an order in one.

This system works for common IO's so why not for sets too?

[ QUOTE ]
Fire/Fire or ice/ice blaster

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I don't think Fire/Fire will work well. It just doesn't have enough mitigation. It's true that not much will survive your AoE attack chain but those that do will paste you.

Ice/Ice might be OK though because of it's slows. I haven't actually tried it though, so treat this opinion with caution.

I do have a Psy/Mental Manip blaster. He deals with small and medium spawns well 'cos of his single target mezzes. Large spawns are more of a challenge and large spawns that mez are death sentences.

I recommend taking Hover if you're going to solo a blaster. It keeps you out of reach of the nasty, brutish melee mobs that want to rip your face off.

[ QUOTE ]
Isn't it http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Main_Page now? Paragonwiki is no longer updated since they moved the wiki to the Titan Network

[/ QUOTE ]

This was true for a while but they're the same site now. The Titan Network had to fight to get the "Paragon Wiki" name back from the other lot.

[ QUOTE ]
I would vote against stone tank though. While they can absorb tons of damage, their bane is dealing damage. Especially when you go Granite and your attack speed is reduced dramatically.

[/ QUOTE ]

Seconded. I've just dinged 50 on a Stone/Energy tank. Stone tanks are very much team toons. They need other people to dish out the damage.

Of course, if you hate dying and don't mind levelling up slowly then you might like it. You'll get plenty of time to finish story arcs!

I don't do it myself but I believe Fire/Kin Controllers are popular. They don't really start ripping through mobs until they get Fulcrum Shift at lvl 38 so you'll probably want something else if you want to farm at lower levels.

[ QUOTE ]
what is an easy way to get these besides farming

people say you get one round about every 6 weeks, but I have been playing for 21 months and never recieved a purple and I play a lot

[/ QUOTE ]

Forget 6 weeks, the only thing that matters is how many lvl 47+ mobs you kill. The chance that each mob drops a purple is about 1 in 6,000. So, if you solo about 60,000 mobs, you should get around 10 purples. (The actual number will probably be between 3 and 17).

It doesn't matter where or why you kill the mobs. Contact missions, task forces, farming maps etc all work fine. So play whatever you like most. The only thing that's special about farming maps is that they maximise the number of mobs you kill in an hour.

[ QUOTE ]
if not is there an easier method to gain inf rather than farming

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The only other way to make lots of inf. is by playing the market. (This is my preferred method.) Getting set up takes a fair amount of effort but once you're rolling you can make more than 100 million a week for about 40 minutes trading a day.

As others have said, you just have to decide which method you enjoy most. If the answer is "none of them" then just forget the purples. They're not that important.

[ QUOTE ]
You actually are missing one of the prerequisites. Check the 3rd last set of IO badges, you're missing the "last" one of that set needed for the accolade.

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Oops. I should have checked that before suggesting a /petition.

When you're not in CoH, the "Print Screen" key will do what you want.

CoH changes the behaviour of this key. It causes it to take a screen shot and save it straight away. I can't remember where exactly. I think it goes in a directory called "Screenshots" under your CoH installation directory.

By default CoH hides the user interface in screenshots but there's an option to include it if you want.

Did you raise this as a bug or a petition? I don't think you'll get the attention of a GM unless you use /petition.

I'm sure a GM will be able to fix this once you've got their attention.

[ QUOTE ]
In my experience of Psi Blast on a Blaster, I have to say it suffers as one of the most blatently ported sets with toons having to close to almost within melee range with a power or two, that coupled with the long animation time for a blaster meant levelling a Psi blaster started to feel tiresome after its teens.

[/ QUOTE ]

Something's wrong here. All the Psychic Blast attacks have a range of 80 except for the snipe which is 150 and the nuke (Psychic Wail) which is a PBAoE.

The attacks in Mental Manipulation on the other hand are mostly melee or PBAoE.

Maybe you're confusing the primary and the secondary.

They wear off in 1 hour I think. It's pretty bizarre that the time in the description is still wrong.

I have to say that some of the buff effects look terrible. One of them surrounds you with a sort of nauseous green/yellow glow. On the other hand one of the others gives you cool rings round your arms and feet. (Knockback resistance I think.)

[ QUOTE ]
Also bear in mind that the amount of damage you do to the mobs affects the xp award of they are damaged by multiple players.

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I believe that only applies if the mob was damaged by someone who wasn't a team mate. If your team takes it down you get full XP. (Maybe that's what you meant.)

Piffle. You're just saying that 'cos it takes a page of instructions to set them up. Some people have no willpower.

On the other hand, the price/performance is great and the power consumption is brilliant. (Esp for the 4650)

[ QUOTE ]
The other part however is less of a joke and offers some things to do to challenge yourself more.

Because you can ask for the devs to make things harder (which may or may not happen but they wont happen now) or you can make things harder for yourself and regain some of the fun and challenge you had when you started this game so long ago.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you've got a good point but deliberately limiting yourself is not to everyone's taste. A lot of the pleasure I get from games comes from finding builds and strategies to overcome the obstacles that are thrown in my way. In CoH, this usually means tweaking a build to overcome a specific weakness and developing new team tactics with my duo partner.

Deliberately restricting myself just sucks the fun out of it. Extra difficulty levels, awkward villains etc bring the challenge back and the fun comes with it.

I appreciate that this is something of a minority view.

Funnily enough, this cropped up with Rome Total War. The difficulty system just didn't work so experienced players couldn't make it any harder. Various players came up with all sorts of "house rules"; self-imposed restrictions to make it harder. Some people enjoyed these challenges but others just hated the idea. They wanted to play against the game with all the weapons in their armoury.

I'm running a couple of new ATI cards here. (A 4850 and a 4650). I had to do a bit of fiddling to get them to render nicely. I'm using the Catalyst 8.10 drivers.

Assuming your card acts like mine you need to do the following. First of all, disable FSAA and anistropic filtering in game.

The ATI drivers aren't compatible with depth of field and high quality water effects. So these must be off or low. (Which you've already done. Good.)

Don't run in 1600x1200. I have no idea why, but this resolution causes lots of rendering bugs on both my systems. I'm running 1280x960 which seems to work fine.

Now you need to change settings in the Catalyst Control Centre. If you play games other than CoH then you'll need a profile for CoH.

Use the following settings under 3D, All Settings. First of all untick "Use application settings for everything" for Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering. Now set the sliders to whatever value you prefer. (I use 4X FSAA and 8X sampling.)

Uncheck "Enable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing." This is a performance killer which causes my systems to grind whenever I look at a transparent texture. (e.g. fences)

The other settings don't really matter. I've got "Disable Catalyst AI" unchecked and the slider set to "Standard". I've got "Wait for vertical refresh" set to "Off, unless application specifies."

Finally, go into "More Setting" and check "Triple buffering". This will smooth the framerate if you decide to use "wait for vertical refresh."

Put Mipmap Detail level to "High Quality". (I think you can use whatever setting you like really.)

I'm not guaranteeing that this will work, but at least it will eliminate the problems I know about.

If you still have frame rate problems when you've done all this then disable sound and check the frame rate. Apparently, bad sound drivers can hammer the refresh rate.

I've been looking at XP ratios myself. I'm don't know the exact details but I think I've got a rough idea how it works.

The XP you get when a mob goes down depends primarily on your combat level, the mob's level relative to this, the size of the team and whether the mob is a minion, lieutenant or boss.

The biggest factor is the last. You get 10x as much XP for a boss as for a minion. This may explain why you were getting 50 XP for some mobs and 500 XP for others.

Team members with different combat levels get different XP because the enemy con's differently to them. Note that the "combat level" of a side kick is one level below their tutor's. So in your case, the combat levels were 18, 20 and 21. I believe that this explains where the 3:4:5 ratio comes from.

The team size factor can be quite large. You will all get double XP if you're in an 8 man team! Obviously, this applies to all of you so it's not immediately obvious when comparing your combat logs.

I believe that the dev's intention is that the lowest level members of the team level fastest. This means that teams that stick together eventually end up at the same level.

I can't tell you whether the actual XP awards are correct or not 'cos I don't know what all the factors are. (Neither the wiki page nor Red Tomax's calculator match what I see in practice but they come out about right.)

I don't know about the cool down. That might explain why the numbers didn't change when you un-sk'd everyone.

I hope this helps a little.

I love fighting Nemesis. A Nemesis invasion would be excellent.

On a side note, I think the Nemesis have the best models in the game. To whoever designed them; good job.

Thanks for the feedback.

The key set bonuses on this build are:-
Acc +36%
Dam +8.5%
Rech +25%
ToHit +6%
Melee Def 8%
Ranged Def 17%
AoE Def 10%

Transfusion's accuracy and recharge both come out at about +50% including set bonuses. The heal bonus is +80. So it pretty much follows your suggestion.

I stuck a complete set in Fire Cages in order to get the +9% Acc and +3% Ranged Def set bonuses. I've maxed accuracy but could squeeze in a bit of extra End and Immob.

Multi-Strike seems to suit Hot Feet. The totals come out at +64 Acc, +95 Dam, +81 End and +41 Rech.

You mention procs in Hot Feet and Fire Cages. Are there any that you found particularly useful?

Hi folks. I'd be most grateful if you could point out any flaws in this Fire/Kin levelling build. (Or suggest any interesting alternatives.

I've just hit 32 and I'm going to use the build to level to 50. I'll be spending most of my time in a duo with a Dark/Dark Defender. I might do some soloing and the odd TF but I won't be farming. I have plenty of inf. and I like to minimax my toons so don't worry about the cost of the build.

This is my first Controller and my first toon with pets, so don't be surprised if I've got something glaringly wrong! I'm particularly clueless about slotting pets.

Please ignore the order that I've selected sockets. I'll sort them out as I level.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Blaise Corona: Level 50 Natural Controller
Primary Power Set: Fire Control
Secondary Power Set: Kinetics
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leaping
Ancillary Pool: Psionic Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Char -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(3), Lock-Rchg/Hold(3), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(5), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(5), Lock-%Hold(7)
Level 1: Transfusion -- Nictus-Acc/Heal(A), Nictus-Heal/HP/Regen/Rchg(7), Nictus-Heal(9)
Level 2: Fire Cages -- TotHntr-Acc/Rchg(A), TotHntr-EndRdx/Immob(9), TotHntr-Acc/EndRdx(11), TotHntr-Immob/Acc(11), TotHntr-Acc/Immob/Rchg(13), TotHntr-Dam%(13)
Level 4: Siphon Power -- Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(25)
Level 6: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 8: Hot Feet -- M'Strk-Acc/Dmg(A), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx(15), M'Strk-Dmg/Rchg(15), M'Strk-Acc/EndRdx(17), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(17), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(19)
Level 10: Siphon Speed -- Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(43)
Level 12: Flashfire -- Stpfy-Acc/Rchg(A), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun(19), Stpfy-Acc/EndRdx(21), Stpfy-Stun/Rng(21), Stpfy-Acc/Stun/Rchg(23), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 14: Health -- Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(A), Numna-Heal(23), Mrcl-Rcvry+(43)
Level 16: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(25)
Level 18: Super Speed -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(46), Clrty-Stlth(46), Winter-ResSlow(50)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod(27), EndMod-I(27)
Level 22: Speed Boost -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(46)
Level 24: Cinders -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(29), Lock-Rchg/Hold(29), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(31), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(31), Lock-%Hold(31)
Level 26: Increase Density -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/EndRdx(A), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(33), S'fstPrt-ResKB(33)
Level 28: Combat Jumping -- Ksmt-ToHit+(A), Jump-I(40)
Level 30: Bonfire -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 32: Fire Imps -- SvgnRt-Acc/Dmg(A), SvgnRt-Dmg/EndRdx(33), SvgnRt-Acc/EndRdx(34), SvgnRt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), SvgnRt-Acc(34), SvgnRt-PetResDam(36)
Level 35: Transference -- Efficacy-EndMod(A), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(36), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(36), Efficacy-Acc/Rchg(37), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc(37), Efficacy-EndMod/EndRdx(37)
Level 38: Fulcrum Shift -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(39), RechRdx-I(39), RechRdx-I(39), EndRdx-I(40)
Level 41: Indomitable Will -- LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(42), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(42), LkGmblr-EndRdx/Rchg(42), LkGmblr-Rchg+(43)
Level 44: Mind Over Body -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam(45), TtmC'tng-EndRdx(45), Aegis-Psi/Status(45)
Level 47: Psionic Tornado -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(48), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(48), Posi-Dmg/Rng(48), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(50), Posi-Dam%(50)
Level 49: Inertial Reduction -- Jump-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Containment



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