AstroLad

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You all prolly seen my ravens base, but thought id post in for those who may not have..:-)

http://www.statesmanswatch.com/bbb/r...lack/index.htm


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All of your base are the sexy! Great job on all of those!

Here's my favorite: Astro

Global: @Astrolad
Gender: Male
Age: 30
Location: Topeka, KS
Height: 5'7"
SG Affiliation: G.U.I.L.T. Association, Public Works
VG Affiliation: PCSAD, Guilt Association
Most Recognizable Server Toon: Astro Lad

Thanks and good luck!

I disagree with your opinions of Rise of the Phoenix and Hurl.

RotP is a very helpful power to a tank. When the going gets tough and the tank goes down, a team wipe isn't far behind. However, when a member of a team can get back up on his or her own without the help of rad or emp player, you can turn the tide to your favor. I wish there was some debt protection with RotP though, something like 120 seconds. It's not a power for everyone but I found it to be very helpful, especially to fire tank who has some of the lowest resists.

Hurl, while not a melee power, does fit within the theme of super strength. I just want to scream, "BECAUSE ITS A SUPER HERO GAME." Some powers are included in the game because it fits the theme and not just the game mechanics.

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You all will get emails on it monday. It is happening.

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Wow, now I'm eating crow.

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Rumors and lies!

There were so many problems with exploits that the devs regularly remove elements from the game that allow unbalanced XP gain. Remember the Winter Lord fiasco?

I think the announcement applies to the test server.

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And you'd be right.

The announcement on our forum.

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Um, you'd be wrong.

The announcement from CuppaJoe is for this weekend for the test server, but the (unofficial) announcement for the live server is for the weekend of the 21st...

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/42894

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That "announcement" is only three sentences long and says NOTHING about the live server.

Rumors and lies!

There were so many problems with exploits that the devs regularly remove elements from the game that allow unbalanced XP gain. Remember the Winter Lord fiasco?

I think the announcement applies to the test server.

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Astrolad, i just want to say you have a sexy Avatar.

Sh4rp-

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Um... thanks?

Thanks!

Your screen shots look great- keep up the good work!

I have to agree that empathy and kinetics are the best "team" oriented power sets. For your secondary, however, I recommend electric. The end drain isn't that great but the set has a great hold in Tesla Cage.

If you go Controller, I suggest stone, ice or mind power sets.

Another thing to consider is power pools. TP is a great team power set as is Leadership. Recall friend I recommend getting right away, especially if you're an empath. Leadership can be taken later on but gives a decent bonus to your team’s abilities to dish out damage.

Thanks, I hope this helps!

I've also got a decent guide in my signature- check it out!

I've always viewed the offensive ablities of burn and the fire primary to be it's defense- kill them before they kill you. I thought that was acceptable because of the lower than average tank defense and resistence.

The current burn nerfs have taken part of that offensive ablitlity away and turned it into a power that either causes the enemy to run away or does too little damage to be useful. Neither fit the profile of a tank or the play style of a fire tanker.

In light of these changes, I don't see any reason for a tank to select a power that makes the enemy run away or take an offensive power that doesn't do effective damage.

I would hate to see any power set have a power not worth taking.

1. Log onto your Photobucket account.
2. You should be taken right to your photo album. There is a menu option for "Add Pictures" and a button called "Choose Picture." Click that button.
3. This will pull down a menu of your hard drive's contents. Select your 80x80 jpeg picture that you have resized and saved on your hard drive, then press "choose."
4. In the "Add Photos" menu, press "Submit."
5. Your photo should now be in your album.
6. Just follow the directions for adding your photo to your CoH forum account and you should be good to go.

Adding a photo to Photobucket is SUPER easy. If you really can't figure it out, I can't help you.

I've updated my forum avatar screenshot guide. I corrected a few spelling errors and consolidated the info detailing taking a screenshot and how to post it.

AstroLad's Screenshot Avatar Forum Guide V. 2

*Updates- I cleaned up some spelling mistakes, grammar and consolidated my posts into one uber guide.

A couple of people have asked me how I got my avatar to look so polished so I thought I would write a guide to help you make your avatar look it's best.

What I’ve done is pretty simple and these tips should help you out. I'm a graphic artist and I've got Photoshop handy, but you should be able to do this with any photo editor.

The first thing I did was set my game resolution as high as it could go and max out the pixels under "Options" in City of Heroes. My screen size is 1280 x 1024.

Next, I went indoors (in City Hall actually) to take the screen grab. The light there is completely balanced and your colors won't shift like they will when you're in an outdoor environment. (Plus the floor looks so cool as a background!)

I played around with the camera position and gave myself an overhead camera view and got the camera as close to his face without him "ghosting" him out. Click and hold down your mouse wheel while you move the mouse around to change your view. Roll the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

Since the face is all I wanted, the rest of the framing didn't matter- I just had to get the camera as close as I could. I made Astro do the "muhhahaha" emote to get him to look up and I hit “print screen” to capture the image.

Next, I opened my CoH image in Photoshop and made a new canvas with an 80x80 pixel size (the max your avatar can be.) I copied my much larger screen cap into the smaller canvas and moved the picture around to where I wanted it. Because the face was too big for the small canvas, I scaled it down and rotated it to fit.

Then, I just saved it as a jpeg with the maximum image quality.

Ta da! That's all I did.

The big secret is setting CoH to the highest levels and getting your toon to fill up the screen as much as you can.


Now that you’ve got a picture of your ‘toon that you like enough to share with the rest of the forums, the next step is sticking it in the upper left hand corner of every one of your posts.

After you’ve saved your picture as described above, you’ll need two more things.

1. Hosting on the web for your picture.
2. A URL address for your picture on the internet.

Step 1.

To host your photo, I recommend www.photobucket.com. You’ll get free hosting for your pictures and enough space per month that everyone on the forums will be able to see your awesome mug shot.

Just register on Photobucket and follow their instructions for uploading your photo. It’s a nice, easy interface and is nearly idiot proof.

Step 2.
Once your photo is uploaded, take a look at your album or catalog of your photos. Under each photo are three versions of the address of your picture. You’ll need this info so the CoH forums will know where your photo is.

Step 3.
Select the line that has information in the “URL” line and “copy” that text. *Make sure you use the URL line and NOT the other two lines. **If you don’t know how to copy text, I can’t help you. Ask your grand kids.

Step 4.
Log onto the CoH forums and click on the “My Home” link under the main title info.

Step 5.
You should now see several menus to choose from. (They all look so good…) Find the menu that says “Main Configuration.” Select the “edit” link next to the “Personal information, email, password, etc.” line.

Step 5.
This is where you enter a lot of info about your profile. Scroll on down to last portion of the page. Select the bubble that says “URL to your avatar.” In the menu space next to that, “Paste” the address of your picture that you copied in Step 3.

Step 6. Click on “Submit.”

Step 7. Pat yourself on the back and start posting with confidence. You’re now one of the forum elite that has a screenshot photo avatar.

Other tips to consider:
*Make sure you saved your photo as a .gif, .jpg, or .png. You might not be able to save your photo on Photobucket if it’s in another format and the forums sure as heck won’t take it if it's not.
*Make sure your photo is 80 x 80 PIXELS. Yeah it’s small, but it’s very important to use the proper size. Anything larger than that will be resized to fit and may cause a “smooshed” effect to your image.
*Be sure to copy only the URL info and not any other info from your album. The “image source” and “tag” lines won’t work on the CoH forums. Other forums may allow those addresses, but CoH won’t.

Hey, it shows he's got a great sense of humor, Aces!

I know some of these are told in game but I'd like to see these stories/characters in comic form:

Atlas
Blue Steel
The Dark Astoria story
The Peeble family
and the Woodsman

Here's my guide to getting a better avatar!

AstroLad's Guide to a Better Avatar

That's a cool looking badge! I don't know if I'll ever wear it, but I'm a badge-aholic.

Easiest badge to earn- evar!

Here's my quick reference guide to powers. Please add it to the G2G if you think it applies.

AstroLad's Power Quick Reference Guide