BloodPython

Never underestimate the power that is N.E.R.D.!

"These aren't the strippers you're looking for."

"These aren't the strippers we're looking for."

"Tip them well, but no touching."

"Tip them well, but no touching! No touching!"

I got it! City of Extras!

You get an exciting career from various dream jobs like Muggee Number 1, Beating Victim, and my favorite... Unwilling Vahzilok Zombie!

Ah, just think of the opportunities. Just when ya thought things couldn't get better in your career life of being mugged by Skulls, a Blood Brother Slammer comes up and sucker shots ya in the berries!

Have a few powers like Grovel, Drop Dead, Whine Like A Wuss, and Get Them To Take Wife Instead, and we've got a sure winner.

Just make sure to pack your athletic cups and hockey helmets.

Castle old buddy, will these upcoming reworkings of Claw and Spine powers make the leap to the Hero versions of the sets as well?

Just wondering if this'd be identical to the recent Martial Arts changes.

Heh, no worries about that sense of entitlement, man.

America's showing signs of peaking in its lifestyle, even now if ya look at oil.

We simply are living an unsustainable quality of life. Nowhere to go but down, unless we figure out cold fusion and how to feed the world.

And if our resource greed doesn't crash us in the next hundred years, all the super resistant bacteria strains will.

There's already staph strains flowing through hospitals that are totally resistant to every current antibiotic known to man.

If you get immuno compromised and contract them, they WILL kill you.

So! Stay healthy, don't go to hospitals less ya have to, and don't pay this kind of thinking too much mind.

It'll literally kill or ruin the people who act like this in the longrun.

There were at LEAST four threads about pre-orders having to be in EARLY to get the headstart.

Of this I'm certain. Not sure if it was actually The C To The J who was mommying each, but I figured I'd give her the credit. She's usually the gal who rides shotgun on rampant n00bism.

And when she doesn't?! Guys like me show up and get surly! Sorry for the tone, but if you've got idiots, sometimes you need to treat em as such. I'm really a nice guy! Honest!

Heh, there's an earlier post where the guys at NC flat out SAID that they'll be adding in personal hideouts for heroes. Heh, now I gotta start up an Ice Tanker. They'll be really popular as an ice cube source for hero parties.

I believe when people are blatantly whining about stupid crap that's been explained with rationale to them over and over, we're supposed to give out pie .

Although! Maybe we could hook ya up with some chocolate pie.

Heh, seems all the misguided whiners have moved to THIS post.

Geeze, arguing about the "validity of" and "worrying about" Cryptic and NC's subscription levels is a blatant fricking farce.

You whiners want ONE THING only. To be let in early even though it's made perfectly clear you won't be til the game IS LAUNCHED.

I DID pre-order months ago. Apparently you missed all the emails saying if you pre-order early, you got a headstart.

Or you missed the links saying it.

Or you missed Cuppa going blue in the face saying it.

This's the worst kind of BS fanboy tantrums I've ever seen. Grow the heck up or get out. You got other games? Go play em. Didn't get a pre-order? Maybe you'll learn for next time. Duh.

The people at Cryptic and NC have jobs to do. Get a life and let them get ready for Launch.

"You go to Hell, Mr. Hat! You go to Hell and you die!" ~ Mr. Garrison

Ya left out the:

"Don't invite the level 21 Invuln tanker who skipped Temp and Unyielding in favor of the Stealth Pool" rule.

People with really broken builds aren't worth healing.

Ten points for Hans!

Taunt's not a herding tool, least it wasn't designed to be. It's an ag controller.

If I'm kenning the original non-herding intent of it, it was to let you stand stationary with a lot of guys on you and snag off problematic mobs at RANGE from your healers etc.

Aint about herding, it's about keeping those five strays who got by you off the Blaster long enough for him to kill em.

[ QUOTE ]
All I ask is this: CoH is a superhero game. If you don't like that it is a superhero game, go to another MMO. Asking for the game to be balanced and teamwork oriented is like taking the Super Friends and telling them their powers must be balanced with each other!

[/ QUOTE ]

And this's the point where I say, "what're you smoking?" Seriously, this "it's a superhero game!!11!!01010!" crap has got to go.

Do you guys honestly think that it'd be any fun playing Superman on a team setting? If it would be for you, how about the rest of the team who does jack [censored] but watch you stomp stuff. Because the way THEIR powers work makes them obsolete to you.

You are not Superman. You never will be Superman here. You are a hero "extra", the nameless ones you see in comics from time to time.

You are not extraordinary from other heroes in the city.

In short, YOU ARE NOT STATESMAN!!!

So get over it. They are not going to let you blatantly outlevel every other AT in the game you could've played, and make teaming with other ATs totally worthless other than for spawning more.

If anybody else uses Marvel or DC characters as a rationale for how this totally different COOPERATIVE computer game should be modeled, I'll hold them down and beat them with my shoe.

~Fed Up Rock~

My gut reaction on this is kind of mixed, States. I see what you guys are aiming for here, but I'm not sure execution's going to work.

Against piddling stuff like the odd minion attacks, this works just fine. Damage values are small enough to let the resistance kick in after each hit lands.

Just going by the numbers, if you get knocked down into a lowish Resist value, and then catch a big hit off a Boss, will this Resist be enough to survive it? When does the Resist kick in?

If two attacks are enough to kill us, I'm assuming we get the Resist to the first after it's done moving our HP%. That first hit doesn't matter, if you can survive it. But what about that second hit? Does the Resist FROM that second hit apply TO that hit as it lands, or is our new Resist calculated after the second hit's done hosing our HP bar to zero?

I can see this being great against lots of stuff in a group, but against lone monsters that hit like a ton of bricks, I'm still curious. Did you guys do something shifty to make this viable against, say, a Hatched Kraken? Otherwise one Foot Stomp that lands will still almost kill me in one hit.

My bad! I assumed Earth Thorns were still bastards, but forgot they no longer stack their Quicksand effects anymore. Hmm... Now you guys are right. Slow Resist on Permafrost IS kinda lame.

Maybe if they lowered the Resist on the other armors so you need Permafrost to cap your Cold Resist. And maybe if they added a hell of a lot more enemies that chuck out Cold damage. I mean, they've got three archetypes using Cold to steal powers from. Where the hell's all the ice enemies?

Um, you guys do know that the main reason they gave the Blood Widow helm to the chickies was that only the FEMALE of all widow spider species is deadly?

Males do not cause any severe bites. Males do not eat the females rather than get jiggy with them. Only female widows do this, so therefore only females should logically get a helm named Blood Widow.

Specially since one of the requisites into the order's almost sure as hell being female. (By order I mean the ranks of Blood Widows, not the preorder.)

I kinda like the idea of Permafrost being switched to slow, and here's why!

1) I still was never going to slot it even if it gave Toxic resist, it's just not worth the slots.

2) If this's a BIG Slow Resist boost, then Ice tanks are in the unique position of being the only ones pretty much unaffected by those POS Earth Thorns and Artemis.

I personally will take the ability to chase down and pimpslap Earth Thorns over a little Toxic resistance any day. Thorns are Ice killers, this at least lets us catch the bastards so we can hack em up with a Greater Sword.

Why aren't the Sky Raiders trying to do a "forced" buy out of City Of Gyros, too? I mean, evil mercenary organization, Greek sandwich company... Just think of the horror! Evil Greek sandwich mercenaries. Gyros for Hire?

But seriously, awesome work so far! Now if we could bust up some Skull drug shipments, stop a Vahzilok morgue raid, just anything MORE like this!

It's been said before but I'll say it again, the best thing you guys could ever do is make so much stuff like this going on in the city that it's not "events" anymore, just everyday life as a hero.

This opens up the potential to really diversify our role as a hero here. Don't have to all be vigilantes anymore, if enough stuff like this goes in. You could just be a super fast public watchdog who specializes in fires and rescue, say.

Jack, what about the power costs on the armors, Embrace, and Icicles though?

EA helps a lot if you have it, to be sure, but you can theoretically get all the Ice toggles WAY before EA. They give less survivability than Stone Armor or Invulnerability, but still cost MORE.

The reduction in Rest time was meant to help this a bit, I guess, but why is Frozen Armor still costing us .75 endurance a second? That's right up there with Cloak of Fear's old cost, and far's I know Armor's still not being lowered in I5.

I'd love to take Ice Sword, Fists, Frost, Touch, and Greater Sword. I can only ever find power for Fists and Frost before Singles and Stamina. EA just lets me actually attack for a change rather than conserving power.

With two End reductions on every armor and Embrace, sixed Stamina, and no Icicles I still am only clearing about 1.92 per second going by my planner. Icicles would send that recovery WAY subpar to baseline if ya put any accuracy or damage on it at all. If you wanted to do as well powerwise between EA's as a level one hero does, you'd have to six Icicles with Reductions.

Can ya give us any reason this set's so expensive to run? Every other tanker AT's much less power intensive, barring possibly Granite, but that's still the ONLY armor you need going when you have it. We use WAY more slots for a lesser effect.

If Icicles wasn't meant to be run all the time, make it a Click Power, huh? Worked for Regen, and I might actually take it then. Why not save us poor people some slots and make it autohit too? Mud Pots and Burn sure are, and Icicles are resisted MUCH more readily by mobs since they're Lethal. They don't even Immobilize, and BARELY cost less than Mud Pots.

Toxic Resistance is nice, but what am I supposed to do pre Stamina and EA still? Hope my spammed Frozen Fists drop zombies fast enough before they get a lucky shot in and kill me? Without those two powers, it takes about six chained attacks with Ice Sword and Fists to run you down to el zilcho.

Why is EA not doing as much to slow attack speeds (STACKING!) as CE is doing?

C'mon, people! Energy in the form we're talking about is kinetic, or HEAT. The energy of MOTION. Energy Absorption by all monikers is REMOVING the energy of motion and giving it to you. Hence the defense increase, I guess, but why in gods name aren't they being slowed more?

Defense is boned for Ice Tanks. Messing with the numbers like you're doing won't fix it, cuz they're not the problem. PLEASE seriously look at some of the posts about alternate Ice tanker solutions.

Hell, I posted one about a max 20% attack reflection inherent on the armors.

Or here's a thought, we rely on and are healed by cold, right? Well, geeze, turn Permafrost into a strong version of Fast Healing. Maybe 100% base heal increase, plus it's normal wussy resistances.

And PLEASE drop the cost on Frozen Armor! My god, man, not even Dark Embrace costs that much to run, and Dark Embrace is a hell of a lot more effective for defense.

Giving EA an endurance boost ability doesn't fix power problems. What do ya do when EA's not up? What do you do before you get the magic thing? Nothing, you're boned unless you slot exactly as I've ALWAYS slotted Ice. With at least two Reductions in EVERY armor and Chilling Embrace.

So if ya want to actually have power to do more than sit there and twitch between EA's, you're forced even more subpar for Defense just to get your end recovery per second barely back above the baseline. And that's with a sixed Stamina.

Ice tankers: Too expensive, too fragile, too weak on status effects, but they make a pretty frozen sculpture all dead and trussed up for the AV's Anonymous buffet table.

P.S. I've played Ice tanks three separate times now. Every single time a new issue comes out I get excited, see nothing's been done to help em out at all, get disgusted and then make a Scrapper. I WANT to play an Ice TANKER, when will you guys actually LET me? My first "real" character was an Icer. That means I've been trying to play this borked up set for as long as I've been here. Never yet been successful or happy with it beyond level 24. Dying five times on a TV respec run when you're running an optimized Ice tanker and have a knowledgable team is NOT kosher. I built that sucker the best I could get with Board advice, and he still got spanked like a redheaded stepchild. I can get most other tankers to 32 in two or three weeks pre I5. Ice can't even tank four +1s safely on Test. I got HAMMERED when I tried one Lt. and three minions. All they're currently good for is sinking DiCaprio and Winslett, or running away.

"Perhaps it would confuse the rabbit if we ran away some more!"

Personally I don't really expect TOO much out of it, simply cuz it's a massproduced thing mailed to a large audience. They just can't do the evilly brilliant intros like Transmetropolitan and Preacher have. Top Cow'd have half the PTA's in the country out to kill em if they did.

Far's an update, I've kinda shelved Anvil for a bit after hitting Nemesis helping out my brother. Explosions made the current build go boom. As far's tweaks I'd make knowing what I know now, I'd sure make a few adjustments.

Short Circuit and Tesla Cage seem to be a MUST, mainly. And maybe Stealth. This build's already toggle heavy for a Blaster anyways, so I'd be a bit loathe to add another toggle. Ya kinda need Fighting and Leaping to even get your swings in.

Since the server's are down, I'm going to work up a new & improved. Something that's optimized for the time being as well as being viable in the late game. I know MUCH more about slotting percentages now, and what to expect from enemies you're going to face. (Hatched Kraken and Fake Nemesis suck!)

Sorry I let this slide for a bit, but my noobishness as per slotting numbers kinda hurt him more than expected. Knowing what I know now, though, I'm rarin to give him another go!

As far as playing with me, I run on Protector almost exclusively, here're my currents:

Steel Crane: 38th MA/SR stealth assassin build,

Fierce Snake: 10th Ice/Ice stealth Blastroller,

and coming soon, the revised Elec/Elec Anvil Strike.

I'll throw up an improved build for you guys and gals soon's I work one up!

Just checked it out and I probably won't touch it at all. Looks way too much like Lineage 2 for me to care about.

And your sword glows when you swing it?! Lame! Least Cryptic's working on the option to let us turn that stuff off.

Heya! This is my little contribution to the Blaster world. It's a VERY specific build, and will not work for everyone, or even every situation.

It is, however, very different and a lot of fun to play. So here you all go! Have fun with it, I know I sure am.

The Stormfist Blaster

Cheers!

~Anvil Strike~

Howdy! I'm currently in the process of running up an Electrical/Electrical, but with a twist: I'm basing him around the Electrical Melee punches, Leaping and Fitness for defenses, and Voltaic Sentinels.

Here's my basic power tree, and I'll explain the key powers in detail:

1 Lightning Bolt/Electric Fence
2 Charged Brawl
4 Lightning Field
6 Combat Jump
8 Boxing
10 Havoc Punch
12 Swift
14 Super Jump
16 Tough
18 Health
20 Stamina
22 Acrobatics
24 Weave
26 Voltaic Sentinel
28 Thunder Strike
30 Build Up
32 Thunderous Blast
35 Power Sink
38 Shocking Grasp

You'll notice that apart from the first two powers and Thunderous Blast, there is NO MORE ranged powers in this build. That was my whole concept from the get go, though. StormFIST.

Electrical Melee is godawful strong, with even Charged Brawl outdamaging Lightning Bolt. This doesn't make Electrical Blast any less necessary in the build, though. Without pets you are BOUND to run into stuff you have no hope of meleeing with. I figure with two Voltaic Sentinels with you, that'd even the playing field nicely. Make no mistake, though, you will NEVER be as tough as a scrapper or tanker. You can just outdamage them by crazy amounts. My Charged Brawl at 12th (the level Anvil Strike's at now) is doing about 47 to 50 damage per hit. My brother's katana scrapper of the same level is doing about 23 with Sting of the Wasp.

If you didn't already know this, base ranged damage for Blasters is set to 100%. Base melee damage for them is set to 110%. That makes your electrical punches FIERCE. If you feel the need to tweak for more ranged, you could drop Build Up and Shocking Grasp for Ball Lightning, Tesla Cage, or Zapp. Keep in mind though, if you ditch Shocking Grasp, you're losing a High damage power with a built in Hold effect. Lt. killer, anyone? A chain of Grasp, Havoc, and Charged should outright kill most lieutenants, and they can't even hit you back.

Anywho, onto keystone powers. I am taking and sixing out every single Electrical Melee punch. Their damage is immense; they have secondary effects like sleep, knockback, disorient, and hold. You cannot go wrong with any of em. Thunder Strike's the keystone punch, though. You read it right, it does HIGH area damage, disorient, AND knockback. In short, it's devastating. With Build Up on, it's almost Superior area damage with Knockback and Disorient. Voltaic Sentinel provides great fire support for this build, and I plan to slot so I can have two at a time out. If I have to explain why I'm going to take and slot Thunderous Blast to you, you should be playing the Sims. Also, the much unloved Lightning Field is great for kicking out area damage to zot minion groups with. It eats up endo fast, but not much is resistant to energy til later levels. You only ever need the one Accuracy on Field, but it's nice for frying minion groups in Perez at your early levels.

Fifteen slots this build NEEDS go into Combat Jump, Tough, and Weave. You won't have these defenses up til later in the case of the Fighting Pools, but if you don't six out Combat Jump, you'll never survive to GET Tough or Weave. I sixed out CJ right after Charged Brawl was sixed out. Before your defenses are complete, you won't want to rush into melee with fists blazing and Sentinels frying, if you ever actually DO rush in. Lightning Bolt is great for pulling single targets to you, and should you ag three or four Electric Fence is GREAT in that it lets you immobilize and use corners to fight the enemies one at a time. With the massive damage coming off your punches, nothing short of a boss should give you real problems if you're one on one. For reference's sake, one sixed out Charged Brawl will take a white con minion down to under half life. Hint: Skulls are weak to Energy damage, you kill them faster than anything else I've yet found, so exploit that.

Six out Stamina AND take Power Sink! This's an endurance heavy build, but with those two powers, you should be golden for even long fights.

Make no mistake this is NOT an easy build to play. If you're new to CoH, I would recommend an easier build over this one. I have died a lot, and I bet I'll reach a level where I can no longer solo easily in the near future. It IS however, a hell of a lot of fun. If you are sick of the scrapper secondaries, and not being able to see your toon, this is a viable "pseudoscrapper". This build looks very very stylish in a fight!!!

Yep, you're now a fragile "scrapper". But with pets and crazy, crazy melee damage (plus mez). Just watch out for things with Sleep effects, those get through your armors easily. And Disorient's a pain, too.

My advice for this build? Find yourself a tanker buddy with Taunt and then AMAZE them with how fast you can utterly destroy Lts. and Bosses. Five hits at my current level drops a Boss to 1/4 life. That is FAST!!

Happy blapping, and don't fear the reaper! Death comes to us all, but the Stormfist looks so good and is so damn entertaining, it's worth a little debt.

~Sincerely, Anvil Strike from Protector~

P.S. If you have any questions about this, or just would like to give some feedback, feel free to PM me! If you happen to outlevel me with this build, I'd love to hear any real challenges or awesome tricks you find.

Far as the street sweeping bit goes, you're foolish if you still do that.

With missions set on Invincible you will make more running them with a good team than you EVER will in the streets.

Streets are for newbs!

Holy cry fest. You suckers really don't have any idea how good you've got it, do you. A few hours of debt to work off? Having to stick together as a team when you're hunting? Pff, that's easy stuff. Get over it.

Back in my old NWN's days, if you died at high levels you would lose MONTHS of experience in one fell swoop. And if no one was there to drag your butt to a priest, you might even STAY dead. Grow up, jeeze!

These changes are aimed at eliminating the kind of players they don't want in their game. It IS their game, after all. We pay to play. Don't like it, find something else. I know of plenty more MMOs that're nothing but twinkfest XP grinds. How boring.

If you quit cuz this beautiful responsive game's "broken", joke's on you. I dare ya to find something as vast that's anywhere near as captivating.

If I were States, I'd take all these people who threaten to quit over stupid stuff seriously. And just ban their accounts.