Austerity

I skip the immobilizes in earth mainly because of the graphics. They're just too crowded for me trying to be at melee range.

Geeze. I almost feel like downloading the client at work and taking advantage of this.

Keep this up for the next 8 hours so I can get home before it ends please!

EMP Arrow is also a "hold" versus a "stun" but looks like a "stun" by animation.

The animation looks like a stun on both (swirly circles around the head) for some reason. It stacks with "hold" magnitude for certain though (otherwise my TA/Electric wouldn't be stacking so much).

I happen to like choking cloud on an ea/rad personally due to the 2 hold mag procs in the newer hold set.

Between gasses and cloud and all the hold proccing going on within them it's pretty easy to disable everything all the time. I also like being at melee range so I can keep popping AM without bugging everyone to assemble. (and I like using air sup a lot)

They didn't explain the actual mechanics of the personal shields in dune, other than that they can be directionally applied (half shields, from the arena duals) and the slower versus faster thing. Granted Herbert wasn't big on explaining the deep mechanics of his tech ideas unless it involved peoples' naughty bits.

GPF (the webcomic) used a similar thing earlier on (like years ago) with their sonic shields, though those weren't explained fully either

If it really was a deflection field it'd be easier to adjust against the slower the attack was, but you're probably correct in stating it was more complex than just a field of deflection force pushing things to the side or away. Perhaps like an air density alteration. The more dense the medium, the more friction is presented and the worse it gets for things trying to move faster through it.

But what if you're John Woo? Clearly that guy needs a primary for Mastermind too. How else will you get a trillion random dudes with two pistols in the same room?

[ QUOTE ]
That's why you go /FF, bubbles keep the oxygen in.

[/ QUOTE ]

Smoke Bomb and/or the arsonist, though :/

And gang war, that'd be totally useless really. You can't bubble all of them quickly enough.

Fields of Force in Dune were overcome by training melee fighting techniques against them. If you realize applying force Y in direction Z against target X pushes you A along the X/Y/Z axis to the left, you adjust and end up hitting the guy if you're good enough.

FF acts like personal shields in Dune. A Field of Force which causes objects and energy with momentum to be pushed away.

The fact that we have energy shields that behave in an ablative fashion in scifi was always a mystery to me

Given how magnetic forces behave in reality the dune/CoH force field makes more sense to me.

I ran this for a while on my ninja/poison and it's pretty much bunk for the above stated reasons.

If there's enough minions that this might matter, then you're probably running around making sure the pets aren't dying. If the pets are fine then there probably isn't enough minions to ever care.

It's still coordination.

I find myself able to drain key groups I'm not playing controller on (given that I have 3 ST holds and EMP arrow) meaning tough bosses that don't go down fast enough, which are pretty much only freak tanks, freaks who just got up (which revive at half endurance, so one SC does it) or carnies. Even Rikti go down too fast most times.

Even with 1 other electric blast you still wont be draining EBs, AVs or GMs effectively. It's the main reason end drain based control sets probably wont ever happen. All it takes is 1 second out of -recovery floor and they get an attack off.

I had one for sale blueside for 80m (crafted), then I took it down by accident because I was trying to link it for an SG mate in chat, then I resold it lamenting the listing fee loss (4m) for 30 mil on an 11 inf listing :/

But you can't make it in MA. And BS/Shield is not a double weapons set, its 2 single handed weapon sets. Both TA and AR are double handed weapon sets. You can only combine weapon unless they're both one handed, seemingly, until they change that aspect.

Though, bane spiders screw with that rule a bit having the mace AND a two handed rifle.

Just saying it's unlikely due to the logic exhibited in the MA creator.

Even if we got AR over TA/AR is double weapon sets. Doubtful we'd ever see it.

I'll agree with electric being a bad pairing for dark.

I mostly posted so I could counterpoint VS on the casttime angle though. Casting VS doesn't actually stop you from moving. If you always cast it while you're moving forward it's fine and doesn't actually have a "cast time" like other long cast time things.

I'd most prefer a storm/fire myself. I could maybe handle a sonic/ if I had fire too. (can't seem to make a sonic that lasts long enough)

I'd roll a TA/Fire just to have another TA too

Electric, IMOO. If you go the close range route for short circuit (which if you take electric epic you should) then you get one more aoe drain in power sink.

Every spawn you should be able to Short + EMP or Short + power sink if you slot for enough recharge, plus it gives you a third single target hold AND thunderstrike which is really nice. You can play like a pseudo controller with that much hold mag and all the draining.

My TA/Elec just hit 50 and she does pretty well with small spawns solo or in a large group taking forward assault with the drain.

Also, Thunderous + 1 blue + short circuit + power sink = totally drained group and full end.

Err, my attacks drain plenty in PvE.

Granted, the normal attacks draining is kinda pointless since SC + Sink or SC + EMP Arrow (from trickarrow) is enough to wipe out everything below an EB in an AoE fashion.

On minions Ball + hold (the epic or the normal one) + 2 ST attacks is enough to drain half or so with my current slotting. Of course by then the minions are almost dead or held and almost dead.

EDIT: Short Circuit is the only real viable drain you have no matter what anyways. It's the only thing preventing recovery for long enough to render anything truly useless. Otherwise they'll gain back enough end to launch an attack every time.

Drain is only really really useful against Freak bosses or in a situation where you have a very tough boss that the team can't take down quickly enough. Or in the case that you have at least 3 other team members that are some form of electric blast as well.

Did it change? I thought it was 100. At least I remember it being 100 when I was last trying to bother holding AVs.

Purple triangles = 100 mag of hold protection.

8 permadom dominators specifically built to recycle their holds as quickly as possible is the only way to even come close as far as I've seen. This also means there is probably not as much debuffing going on (little to no -res) so the damage will be reduced. You also don't have damage-dedicated members on the team so, more damage reduction.

It's not really a good way to tackle an AV when it could more easily and quickly be done by a debuff team or a moderately survivable damage team.

Wait wait.. everyone quickly post with their most obvious property.

We need at least Aracana to come in and work up some numbers concerning the male to female population and statistics on dress code and B_I to come in on page 3 or 4 and complain about the Forum Cartel pushing their views on cosmetics on the general populace.

That's what I call them in my database designs for twitter sites

http://www.pickofthetwitter.com/

http://twitter.com/pickofthetwitr is my baby

I'm on http://twitter.com/Austerity though I don't tweet much about CoH, more amusing links to things.

I mainly see twitter as a multi-user broadcast IM client. I can throw out amusing links, I can tell the world I'm at work on odd days (so people can reach me on work IM or email) etc.

The problem is Everquest took the original model (which was not UO or Merdian, it was text-based MuX games) which was social-centric and added the concept of "raids" which only really occurred at max level and required a ton of people to accomplish. This created the concept of "grinding" in the bad sense.

Originally you had to keep killing the same thing over and over again due to lack of areas and diversity in things to kill. The end game was generally much worse whereby there was only one or two things you could potentially kill to continue to advance. At some point you'd end up at max level and you could only really:

1. Sit around chatting
2. Help people advance
3. Take on a staff position/build if the system allowed it

Sitting around chatting can obviously occur at any level so hitting max is pointless.

It's difficult to help other people advance except by powerlevel tactics in modern MMOs due to level restrictions on xp gain in groups.

Modern MMOs are also a business, so there's no chance of getting staff tools just because you hit max level so that's out as well.

So now we're left with this raid concept, or PvP, both of which require or make max level desirable for. You always want the best stuff and all of your powers/skills/spells to tackle PvP. (even level halted twinks like battlegrounds in WoW have hit "max" level for their bracket)

That concept for end game engenders and attitude that you need to be max level to truly be enjoying the game, thus invalidating all other level brackets of play and turning it into a "grind".

Grinding has always existed in MMORPGs. It's just more recently that it's seen as a bad area to be in.

The Magic Man arc (the final mission at least) is still awesome. I love the magic man. I also love the slot machine's arc redside.

Base DIKU code (I've got it on my home machine) has a demi-god/wizard level that's one appointed step above the max numeric level (technically numeric level and "staff level" are different values, so its +1 staff level really) which adds a few staff powers. (most notably the GOTO command, and some of the hiding-from-the-who-list commands).

Base MERC code follows suit, as well as ROM and GW. (all of which are DIKU children architecturally and historically)

LP is a totally different ball game due to its architecture. Most SMAUG code has commands tied into inventory objects and rooms, similar to LP, so a lot of builder commands in the MUSH and MUSE communities were built into things like minature bulldozers and shovels etc which granted things like room editing.

I can remember a handful of them that allowed owned-area editing for clan/guild halls and player housing in the DIKU set, but hardly any had unrestricted access at the non-staff level that I was on personally. The last list of MUDs I had was over 100k long so I doubt anyone has good statistics on which ones did