Brawlnstein

At this point it's been down for 17 going on 18 hours, any bets as to it taking over 24?

My small tip is to grab only 1 or 2 Tips then head into the mission(s) getting your 2nd or 3rd Tip inside. That way you generally end up in a rolling set of tip missions without having to stop and street sweep for more tips somewhere along the way.

Running a KM/SD Brute that just dinged 35 as the server maintenance hit.

Quick Strike: This attack is freaking fast and is the closest I've ever come to feeling like my fingers were wearing out in CoH. Was good filler at low levels for building fury and Power Siphon points though.
Body Blow and Smashing Blow: Practically the same damage and cast time and stun proc, sheesh! Decent enough I guess and synergy with the stuns.
Repulsing Torrent: Didn't take as I'm told it does KB and I want to keep stuff in AOO.
Taunt: Yep.
Burst: Augh, if only it was a tad quicker or more damaging or SOMETHING. It's really your go to attack in a lot of ways as I noticed many attack strings seem to leave foes with a very small amount of life (more than a Brawl but less than a Smashing Blow etc.) and this lets you knock them all down at once efficiently. Why no KB sets allowed?
Focused Burst: Little more damage than Smashing Blow but with a teeny bit o' range but the darn cast time is... actually not that long but in a set with stuff like Quick Strike it seems long. About as long as Knockout Blow, in a lot of ways similar but not in the DAMAGE category!
Concentrated Strike: Even LONGER animation and nearly twice the damage of Smashing Blow. Keep expecting this to one shot an LT but it doesn't. Could really use a guaranteed stun on this. The t9 power just seems lacking on a Brute.

Hmm, maybe not the most useful insights but there they are. The set damage seems frustratingly low. KM just seems mushy. Hitting stuff while a good rage amount, Power Siphon stacks and some AOO you would think does some decent damage but... bleh. Also, I've never struggled so much to find a decent attack chain/pattern while soloing door missions. While there is a certain synergy with KM/PS and rage it also means your damage fluctuates wildly as that synergy aligns and fades.

Enough "feelings" talk though. This thread has some great numerical points about KM on Brutes vs. Scrappers. Additionally, the problems of Shield Charge on Brutes vs. Scrappers are well known (Scrappers do more damage) to many. It just seems that both sets are tailor made to be "worse" on Brutes. It's not that a KM/SD Brute won't be pretty kick *** and clear missions fine, it's that old Inequity Aversion (kinda) going through the back of your head saying, "This would just be better on a Scrapper..."

On a general level, the pairing has some sound ideas. SD Shield Charge helping with the AoE light KM, especially as many seem to skip Repulsing Torrent making KM even AoE light-er. PS and Rage Bar work similarly enough for simple synergy. Stacking KM res debuff working in concert with all your Rage and AOO damage buffs. Even more AoE attacks in Patron Pools. A lot of this is available to Scrapper too though. :-/

Edit: One thing that has been bugging me. I've been able to consistently queue an attack after Body Blow that will fire off on a dead target. Now, firing at dead targets has been a lot more prevalent ever since the i3(4?) server changes but I don't think I've ever been able to do it on a melee toon before. Usually a Blaster/Ranged attack where you can get a second attack launched before the first lands is where you see this. Maybe the damage dealing timing on Body Blow could be moved ever so slightly forward in the animation to prevent this.

Edit2: Another great thread with numbers.

FALLOW adjective /ˈfalō/ 

1. (of farmland) Plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility as part of a crop rotation or to avoid surplus production
   • - incentives for farmers to let the land lie fallow in order to reduce grain surpluses
2. Inactive
   • - long fallow periods when nothing seems to happen
   

Thanks! I'll give that another shot but I have actually already tried binding ESC to /unselect. ESC used to be that by default, actually, and I bind it to that on any new character I make.

Some forum searching has lead me to believe this may not really be fixable without some of the sillier workarounds I've found like literally changing the ESC key at the keyboard/windows level. Anyone else want to give this a shot or at least confirm my suspicions?

This has been bugging me for years and my search fu is weak (seems that ESC isn't a good term to need to search for!)

ESC, by default does a pair of things. It does /unselect, clearing your target. It also moves you out of your combat stance and puts away any weapon you have drawn like Claws or a Gun, etc.

Is it at all possible to clear that second functionality from the key? I got rather used to hitting ESC to clear my target then tapping a key twice to target the nearest target and fire a power. On weapon sets this means I will put away my weapon, then draw it again, then fire the attack, generally causing delays and/or rooting animations and looking generally funky and being annoying.

For the time being I try to remember not to hit ESC more than once on any weapon toons but sometimes lag and responsiveness cause hiccups. Also working on using the ` key for /unselect specifically but 7+ years of habits are hard to break!

I've tried /unbind and /bind'ing ESC to other things but it seems to retain the "unready" ability. I also tried some applications to swap the ESC key with another key (f12) and bind f12 to /unselect but this is not very on the fly in windows, requiring a log out and log in to take effect.

Programs that claim to be able to change a key on the fly seem to work, kind of, in that they switch the key to something else in windows but CoH seems to stubbornly hang on to the functionality. Perhaps through DirectInput or something, I'm not sure how.

I'm betting dollars to doughnuts, though, that I'll be told ESC "unready" can't be changed. Am I right Player Help forumites?

Thanks in advance.

11.3 simply does not crash for me, anything newer will crash eventually. Most frequently on the load screen after that initial pause when the bar speeds up and moves quickly towards full.

HIS H585FN1GD Radeon HD 5850 (Cypress Pro) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T @2.80ghz
8GB of Ram

I believe there has long been "override" directories that can be used to replace certain assets, songs and sounds. This has been used in the past by folks with issues with looping sounds or the folks at Vidiot Maps, etc. If one is truly nostalgic enough they could use those to replace the new songs with old.

Why didn't we get emails about the double xp weekend on accounts NOT deactivated?

I have tons of old emails notifying us about double xp weekends in the past but this time... *sounds of slowly twisting in the wind*

Same here, whenever I see this I need to log out and back in to fix it. Usually only see it once in a week and generally after coming out of a mission in which I changed levels somehow, either by dinging up or super sidekick/exemplar, etc.

I'd like to note that this issue also occurs in the Shadow Shard maps given out by Technician Naylor in City of Villains. Missions like "Last Stand on Mole Point Bravo" or "Secure Longbow base in an alternate dimension" especially notable anytime you have to escort a hostage back to that little rock door and into the portal room as you get to slowly enjoy the flashing scenery.

(The mobs seem to walk extra slow, especially that darn CoT boss you are escorting who says something like, "This is the most incompetent kidnapping ever!" every time you walk more than 10 feet from him! More time to rotate the camera and make things appear and disappear.)

Seems like, when it comes to AV they have nothing special of note as far as PToD and Sleep protection goes...
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archvillain

After that, I guess you just check the purple patch, looks like .65 like you said...
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Purple_Patch

So as long as you are layering sleeps with enough magnitude (6 total IIRC) they will sleep for 65% of the normal duration of the sleep. If someone fires up Unstoppable or manages to toggle on Unyielding, etc, you will need to overcome that too but that shouldn't happen unless you miss some casts.

Apologies for double posting, new information though.

After running a single mission at 0/x6/y/n (enemy level +/-0, equal to 6 teammates, yes i want to fight bosses, no I don't want AVs) I have NOT been able to reproduce the 45 Generic Recipe drop bug regardless of settings.

According to the notes I've been taking while testing the only thing I hadn't tried was setting bosses to Yes. Possibly toggling this on for one mission then toggling it off has "fixed" the bug. Something has "fixed" it as the reproduction rate of the bug was at around 3-5 level 45 generics per flashback and now I can't get a single one.

The other "bugs" like level 50 mobs dropping 49s and such are still happening. It seems that all mobs drop their recipes at the lowest possible level for the mission, whatever that is per your difficulty settings and adjusted for the permanent "minus 1" affect happening with TFs and Flashbacks right now. Drops from mission completes do not seem to be affected as I got a 49 Stupefy:Stun/Range recipe in a mission where all other recipe drops were 48 due to -1 difficulty and -1 global TF/FB bug.

Essentially, the bug has a workaround involving completing a flashback with a setting of at least 0/x6/y/n and possibly as simple as setting bosses to Y with any other settings. I might test this on another toon that I've never fiddled with the boss y/n toggle on before but I'm pretty burnt out on testing this, even with all the good drops.

Edit: As an update/clarification, I just reproduced the 45 generic bug off a 49 Boss turned LT Fake Nemesis, so it still exists, even when I'm not trying to get it to, heh.

Edit2: This is a first, I just got a 45 generic as the reward for finishing the mission? Either that or it fell off a 48 EB, hard to tell with the combat text all run together. It came after the defeat of the EB but before the "you have blah blah-ed the mission blah!" so I'm hoping it's just another common repro off a mob kill. I DO have day job: chronologist running though...

Edit3: Indeed, Chronologist day job makes this bug reproduction rate go through the roof. Why chronologist affects mob drop rate, I dunno...

I've a Blaster with timebomb that has tons o' fun dropping bombs during zombie attacks, easy to get it off with their weird spawn delay and all the buffs/debuffs flying around. It kicks ***! It is definitely slow in missions but I do have fun cranking up the number of mobs and double bombing with a timer and a trip mine.

I would think the slowness is about on par with normal defender soloing?

I wouldn't want the power removed from the game altogether, it's a really different play style that is fun for some, even a jaded 60 month vet like me that can't stands no slow mo enjoys using it from time to time. Miladys Knight hit it dead on though, IMO.